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literacy is beginning to be defined as the ability to share meaning through symbol systems in order to fully participate in society

“text” is beginning to be understood as any form of expression or communication in fixed and tangible form that uses symbol systems, including language, still and moving images, graphic design, sound, music and interactivity.

New types of texts and new types of literacies have been emerging over a period of more than 50 years.

ounder of Temple University’s Media Education Lab, now gives policy makers and education leaders a detailed plan to boost media literacy skills in their communitie

new white paper, “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action,” by Renee Hobbs, founder of Temple University’s Media Education Lab, now gives policy makers and education leaders a detailed plan to boost media literacy skills in their communities.

Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart: • Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs. • Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. • Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. • Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign. • The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea. • Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume? • Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one? • The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. • Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.